One method to coat a medical prosthesis is a strip coating mode. Strip coating is a raster type of coating that follows a predefined regular path that does not depend upon strut geometry. An example of a stent pattern with some of the plurality of strip coating pathways is shown in FIG. 1a. FIG. 1b is an exploded view of the portion of FIG. 1a bounded by the box (upper left corner). As shown in FIG. 1a, each coating pathway extends from one end of the medical prosthesis to the other end of the medical prosthesis and each coating point is bisected by one coating pathway. The coating applicator deposits a drop onto coating points that are bisected by the pathway being traveled. As can be seen from FIG. 1a, based on the stent geometry and the number of coating points, the number of strip coating pathways can be numerous. The medical prosthesis or the coating applicator rotates about the longitudinal axis of the medical prosthesis in incremental steps to go from one pathway to the next pathway until the coating applicator has traveled along each coating pathway.
Another method of determining a coating pathway is a vector approach. In this method, the coating applicator travels along the strut centerline from one coating point to another coating point. An example of a stent pattern with a vector approach coating pathway is shown in FIG. 2. As can be seen in FIG. 2, each coating point is bisected by the coating pathway. Because the coating pathway travels along the strut centerline from coating point to coating point, the maximum angle of deviation depends upon the stent geometry. For a stent pattern with circumferential bands of struts that are longitudinally separated and that are connected one to another by connectors, the coating pathway does not extend longitudinally from one end of the medical prosthesis to the other end.
Commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 7,048,962, incorporated by reference in its entirety, discusses raster coating and vector coating.
The art referred to and/or described above is not intended to constitute an admission that any patent, publication or other information referred to herein is “prior art” with respect to this invention. In addition, this section should not be construed to mean that a search has been made or that no other pertinent information as defined in 37 C.F.R. §1.56(a) exists.
All US patents and applications and all other published documents mentioned anywhere in this application are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.